If it is not, to require an employee to work at home in severe weather will constitute a unilateral variation of contracts of employment requiring consultation in advance with affected staff.

Employers should also consider the health and safety aspects of homeworking before imposing a homeworking requirement: some employees’ homes will simply not be set up to be turned into a temporary workplace.

3. Can employees take periods when they cannot get to work because of poor weather as annual leave?

An employee taking advantage of this right must inform you of the reason for the absence, and likely length of the absence, as soon as he or she can.

This article was originally published on 13 January 2017.

About Stephen Simpson

Stephen Simpson is a principal employment law editor at XpertHR. His areas of responsibility include the policies and documents and law reports. After obtaining a law degree and training to be a solicitor, he moved into publishing, initially with Butterworths. He joined XpertHR in its early days in 2001.

12 Responses to Winter weather and work: five common employer queries

Regarding the right to unpaid leave for dependents…does this not only apply to the right to unapdi leave for the purposes of arranging alternative childcare, rather than to actual provide the care yourself?

Nic – I think you are right (I’m just in HR so this is not a legal answer) but certainly employees generally tend to think the entitlement is for them to take unpaid time off to provide the care. I think it would be reasonable to consider that on the first day of disrupted care arrangements the parent could be dual-tasking – ie looking after the child at the same time as trying to arrange alternative childcare – but after that (and certainly after two days) I would argue they are not covered by this right. Unfortunately, in reality, I think employers have their hands tied because (in my experience) parents tend not to have any pre-arranged ‘option 2’ childcare in place and find it difficult to find someone to look after children at short notice, so have to stay at home themselves. Arguably the employer could sanction the employee but (and especially since the absence is unpaid) that probably doesn’t achieve much other than make the employer seem unsympathetic!. If a particular person regularly took time off due to failed childcare arrangements, I would have a conversation to point out their actual rights and suggest they get some emergency back-up in place in principle to avoid absence in future.

I am in a position of being a worker for my local council but under a zero hours contract(effectivly). I teach in children’s home who cannot access school. The council have said they are under no obligation to pay if we cannot get to work, and there is no chance in this job of working from home. We have a contract but there is no adverse weather terms.

Where does an employer stand if the Police say do not travel ? And secondly what would your view be if as an employer, an extra days holiday was given to employees who made the effort to get into work. Those who didnt would not be have an time deducted.

What if employers just suit their self at that time! Bad weather meant my husband was sent home, employer asked if he had holidays??? If employer sends you home, why should you have to use your holiday entitlement??! Now employer wants to change contract to reflect adverse weather conditions, he doesn’t pay average holiday pay and wants everything his own way! Reality check – employers not always right! Employers need to realise his staff keep him in money, greedy to the core

Apart from this, the maternity period of women also has a major impact on the results. How to handle this? Initially, they have agreed to commit for a 3 months period but now they tend to violate that. How to proceed with this?

if employee makes the effort to go to work & government did highlight not to travel or avoid going by car ,most transport was cut back or stopped company have a responsibility to their staff to make sure they are safe & any good employer would do the right thing ,government should play its part when red alerts are called .

During the bad weather I was at work all week, but many colleagues were not. They have been given 2 days ‘free holiday’ (i.e. not made to take it as annual leave or unpaid), but have not credited people like myself, who made it to work, with extra pay or holiday, which does not seem very fair given that means we’ve effectively lost out on two extra days holiday. Are we entitled to any recompense in lieu of attending work?